West Coast Road Trip | Day One: Passing Through Amazing Big Sur!

It all began by an email from Foursquare describing best road trips in United States. Going north through Pacific Coast Highway is one of them. I was waiting for couple of months and finally made it happen! I had an amazing week on road up to Canada border. I`ll write about them in a week and let you know what happened during my road trip.

Getting ready for road trip

Me and my friend got a Hyundai Elantra which has a low fuel consumption, and enough space for two with lots of things to carry. Including a 3-person tent, two chairs (which we never used!), sleeping bags, propane stove, some dishes and food to eat. Where to stay? We really had no plans for that! Anywhere we can sleep is going to be OK (and we spent 2 nights in car, which is no big deal!). Camera, 2 pair of shoes, laptop, and sets of cloth are our other equipments for this road trip.

It took almost 400 miles to arrive at Monterey. Time estimate is almost 9 hours, but it took us much longer to arrive there!

Pacific Coast Highway begins from south California, and finishes in Leggett city. From that point, in continues as freeway 101. The beauty of Pacific Coast Highway is that it cross beside Pacific Ocean and in almost all times, you have sea and jungle in your view. The time that we picked is somehow a crowded time. It is just before schools start, so people are all around enjoying their days off just before go to classes again.

For this road trip, we are highly dependent on our smartphones and internet connection. Google Maps and other apps are of those necessary tools we used all the time to go along the road and find places to eat or visit. Because of lack of connections during the road, I saved offline maps on Google Maps, making sure we don`t get lost. I highly recommend to have several maps and spot finding apps at hand, sometimes there might be a mistake with one, which can be solved by other app. Also, never rely on time estimation done by Google Maps. It always take longer to arrive!

Let`s Go!

We started driving through Pacific Coast Highway from Santa Monica. This is the road that takes you to Santa Barbara and Solvang. We arrived by Lompoc city at noon, and took West Ocean Avenue to have lunch at Ocean Beach Park.

Ocean Beach ParkOcean Beach Park is a great spot for birds watchingThere is a railroad at Ocean Beach Park as wellWarming up some canned food by a Propane stove.There are lots of farms along the way. Some of them lets you go in and pick as much as you want!You can also buy fresh fruits from farmers in such roadside markets.Cayucos State Beach is all about wine! No wine tasting for us, we are about to drive a long way!and you can enjoy beach here too! We arrived late afternoon and took some time to rest.Pacific Coast Highway becomes more and more amazing as we go further!Lucia Lodge can be great place to stay! If not, you can just enjoy the view for a moment and move on.

Big Sur is an amazing area to be and enjoy the nature miracles and beauties.Cabins to stay at Lucia Lodge and enjoy ocean viewWe were told that Big Sur is in threatened by wild fire. So all national parks and most of camp grounds are closed. Even the road might be close by tomorrow! So we had no chance of staying here. We had to leave this place and get to next city as soon as possible: MontereyWe can count ourselves lucky to find a free space in Monterey veterans memorial park campground. We only allowed to park our car and rest the night in car. I had to keep to engine running to heat up in cold night!